


How high a price must you pay before realising it was too much is too late?

by EthelPhantom



Series: Ethel's Maribat March 2020 [12]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Mistakes, Things aren't going very well, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, they fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthelPhantom/pseuds/EthelPhantom
Summary: Maribat March 2020, day 18: WithdrawalIt was the biggest mistake of his life. A mistake that cost him the one he loved.It costhermore.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Ethel's Maribat March 2020 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650745
Comments: 33
Kudos: 219
Collections: Maribat March





	How high a price must you pay before realising it was too much is too late?

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I have a few a little happier stories coming soon. I swear.

It had been a mistake. 

Leaving Marinette alone in the fight wasn’t a mistake, that had one hundred per cent been the goal from the second he was sure she was going to betray them. That had been intentional, in all senses of the word. It had never been something he’d thought about only once. Regardless of how it turned out, it couldn't be called a mistake when he had meant to do it.

No, what  _ was _ a mistake was the fact he’d even thought she was ever going to betray them in the first place. Because she wasn’t. She would have never. She had never been planning on that, that much was sure from the moment her eyes turned to try and find him when things got worse, she sighed out of relief when she realised he was in no trouble, and the unfiltered  _ horror  _ on her face that she had not held back when she realised any and all of her calls for help and back up went unanswered because he’d  _ closed the comms.  _ The expression that graced her face upon the realisation that he’d left her alone was something that haunted his nightmares while she was lying in bed, in a coma, her heartbeats barely there any time he went to see how she was doing. 

No one in the family blamed him. He had been the one to speak up about the possibility, but they had all investigated the matter before deciding to do anything.  _ All  _ of them had come to the same conclusion, she was not to be trusted, and she was most likely going to betray them at some point. 

Bruce had been the one to tell him how the situation looked to them, and Tim had been the one to make the call to leave her. To withdraw himself from the battle.

The fact they — that  _ he _ — had ever thought anything like that about Marinette, about the sweetest girl any of them knew, about the one with the biggest heart they had ever seen in anyone for even Dick didn't compare, about his  _ girlfriend,  _ now _that_ was a mistake. 

A mistake that was most likely going to cost Tim so much more than he ever would have imagined.

It had now been a few weeks since the incident had taken place. Marinette was still not waking up. 

Or so he thought, anyway.

His door opened, without anyone having knocked, and Tim rushed to take his face out of his palms. “Drake, your paramour has showed some signs of life again. Her hand was twitching when Grayson went to see her some time ago,” Damian bluntly informed him. Then he turned around and left before Tim could yell at him for not telling him earlier.

Tim was back on his feet in  _ seconds _ . The way to Marinette’s room felt too long, too far away, as he ran down the hallways and the staircases and he had only barely enough self-control to not just yank the door of her room open. 

Tim sat down on the chair that had been pulled out in front of the bed and watched Marinette breath slowly. Her chest moved a little with her breaths, but while it wasn’t enough to show whether she was going to wake up again or not, it was enough to bring him hope that she was. 

Hopefully, she would. 

After a few hours that he’d spent working on some cases, Marinette opened her eyes. He didn’t actually see  _ that _ happen, but he did hear her fragile voice when she spoke. 

“Tim…?”

Tim put his laptop away immediately to be able to look at his girlfriend in the eyes again. The blue of them was dimmed, now closer to grey than it usually was. 

“Yes?”

“Are you— are you okay? You didn’t get injured, right?”

Tim wanted to laugh. She was asking if  _ he  _ were okay. As if he wasn’t the reason  _ she  _ was now in this condition.

He couldn’t voice any of his thoughts, though. The only thing he knew how to say right now was “I’m sorry, Marinette. I’m so sorry.”

Marinette seemed to look like she was trying to move her hand, judging by how she was concentrating and her hand twitched, but it didn’t move more than that. 

“Why…? Why can’t I move?” she asked, panic seeping into her voice. Her breaths were getting heavier, quicker. 

“The doctors say you… that you were going to be paralysed neck down, most likely. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Marinette’s smile was far too gentle. She shouldn’t be smiling at him like that. He didn't deserve the kindness she was showing him for now at least. The tears Tim had been holding back refused to stay in his eyes any longer.

“Yeah, yeah it was. I’m so sorry, Nettie.”

“None of that, Tim. Did you get hurt? I understand you couldn’t have helped me if you were injured yourself. I’d hug you but I really can’t right now, so I just have to settle with saying what I would’ve done.”

Tim gulped. He didn’t want to tell her, she wasn’t even angry with him, but she needed to know. She deserved to know. He could lie, but she would find out eventually like she always did, and that would make everything so much worse. After all, Marinette hated liars. She always had. 

“No, Nettie. It really was my fault. I—” Tim was shaking. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but it was difficult. “I made the conscious decision to withdraw from the battle. I thought— I thought you were going to betray us and I…” A gulp. “It was all I thought I could do about it. I’m so sorry.”

The warmth of Marinette’s eyes was gone just like that, and now the atmosphere in the room turned cold, colder, until it was  _ freezing.  _

“You did  _ what _ ?”

“I—”

“Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne,  _ what did you do _ ?”

“I’m sorry.”

Marinette’s gaze hardened and sharpened, but there was no trace of tears on her face. 

“You left me alone, in a fight, against someone you very well knew could and probably  _ would _ kill me if I were the sole person there?” Marinette inhaled deep and turned her gaze away from Tim. Her voice cracked as she spoke the next time. “You thought I was going to betray you, and instead of, I don’t know,  _ talking to me _ or maybe  _ putting me into confinement and interrogating me _ , which, might I remind you, usually wouldn’t involve anyone getting paralysed, even with you Bats—” It hurt to hear she was excluding herself from the rest of them, but Tim could understand it. “—but noooooo, you just  _ had to  _ leave me at a time when you  _ knew _ it would cost me my life or my body or something! Do you  _ ever  _ think about the  _ consequences _ ?!”

Marinette was screaming by the time she finished. Tim could understand what she was saying, but also, she was wrong. He had thought about the consequences, he had weighed his options, and this was the only conclusion he had been able to come to. And besides, he wasn’t the only one to blame. Why was she only blaming him?

“I did! I considered my choices! This was the best way with the least—”

“Like _hell_ it was!”

“You left us with no options! Everything I looked into screamed awaiting betrayal!”

“From  _ your  _ side, maybe!”

“Shut up for once and listen to me, Marinette! It’s not like I was the only one in on this anyway! I would have never wanted to do this, and I admit, it was a mistake on my part to think you were going to betray us, but everyone else agreed! I’m not the only one at fault here! We  _ all  _ looked into it! Bruce was the one to inform me of how the situation looked to everyone else! In the end, I only withdrew myself from the fight!”

“I—”

“And maybe, if you hadn’t been like you were, if you hadn’t acted so suspicious, maybe none of this would have happened!”

Her breath hitched as he said the last words. Tim realised his mistake too late. It wasn’t Marinette’s fault. There were tears in Marinette’s eyes, but it seemed she refused to let them free. 

“I—”

“No, no, no.  _ You  _ don’t get to be angry.  _ I’m  _ the one that had to pay the price for  _ your  _ mistakes!  _ I’m  _ the one whose ability  _ your mistrust _ cost! Don’t you  _ dare _ blame this one on me, Wayne! You just proved my point!  _ You _ were the one making the call in the end! And so what if everyone else was in it as well? It’s their fault then as well. It doesn’t make  _ you  _ any less guilty!”

His need to defend himself was not letting her just cuss him out. It wasn’t his fault that much! 

“You’re only blaming me here! I told you, it wasn’t me that thought that was a good moment! They’re my family, I would do anything for them! Surely you must understand that!”

“No, I don’t!”

_ What?  _

“My family gave me so much freedom it was borderline neglect! I know yours  _ actually  _ neglected you, no need to remind me, and my situation was better than that, but still. My family couldn’t care less when I left! My family did not do the ‘I’d do anything for you’ thing. The closest thing to a family I would have done anything and everything for was  _ this one!  _ You, and your dad, and your siblings, and their families! Not mine! And you just— you just— you just thought I’d betray you and sell you out or whatever and decided that it was easier to leave me to die than to  _ talk  _ to me about it.” 

Her voice went down, and quieter, as she spoke. She inhaled sharply as a tear rolled down her cheek. 

“I would have done anything for you. I would have done so much for your family if they had asked, and anything for them if  _ you _ had asked. I don’t—” Her voice broke but she couldn’t stop talking. “I hate that despite all that, you didn’t trust me and thought I would have betrayed the only family I truly _thought_ I  knew. __ I’m not sure you understand how much  _ that _ hurts, Timothy.”

The fact she went from using any nickname for him to his given name hurt. She was back at calling him by his given name _intentionally._ The last time she’d called him  _ Timothy  _ was back when they hadn’t yet known each other, when Tim had been called Timothy when she’d been listening, and she’d changed to  _ Tim _ immediately after Tim said that’s what he preferred. 

She had demoted them back to strangers.

“I’m sorry” was truly the only thing he knew how to say.

Tim stood up and headed for the door when Marinette’s soft voice echoed from behind him. Her soft, fragile voice, both filled with so much hope and so much dread and hurt. 

“Even Alfred? Cass?”

Tim’s silence spoke for him.

“No… no, no, no, no,  _ no!  _ Get out! I want away from you! I hate you!  _ Hate you!”  _

It seemed Marinette would have thrown something at him if she’d been able to. 

God, did Tim wish she would have been able to. He would have preferred a chair thrown at his head over the misery he could just hear Marinette was in, over the blame and guilt both Marinette and Tim himself had placed him under.

Just as Tim was about to open the door, he heard Marinette call out for him once more. 

“And Timothy?”

“Yes?” He hated how hopeful his voice sounded.

“We’re _over_. I never want to see you again.”

Closing the door behind him after hearing those simple words felt like getting crushed by a mountain.

Over the weeks as she recovered, Tim watched Marinette break down multiple times. Sometimes it was over the simple fact she couldn’t eat without help. As Marinette had refused all their help, they had had to call someone else to do it. They had had to call (and fly, as they had been in France) Félix and Kagami to help her. The only people she’d told them that she would allow to help her had been the angry, grumpy, always scowling young man with remarks and insults veiled in politeness that all of them noticed but couldn’t call him out for, and a girl as skilled with a sword as their youngest brother with a sharp tongue who didn’t even care to disguise her insults. 

Sometimes, she broke down because she remembered she couldn’t design anymore. Marinette had been watching a documentary about nature and gotten inspired to design a new collection, it had been obvious because her eyes were bright and full of happiness for a moment, but when she’d tried to go and get her sketchbook, she realised she didn’t have the use of her legs anymore, let alone her hands. That tended to lead to the realisation not only couldn’t she design, but sewing was also no longer a possibility.

Sometimes, it was because she couldn’t walk. Sometimes it began when she woke up to a craving and wanted to bake but couldn’t. Sometimes it was because she watched the news and saw people get hurt and then realised she could no longer help them. She couldn’t do anything but turn her head a little and speak. That was all. Even that was difficult, sometimes. Too often.

And Tim. Tim could do nothing but watch it happen. Every time any of them tried to get close, she turned cold, angry, would stop speaking unless it was to remind them her condition was their fault, or to reply when they made a comment that she thought was wrong. Especially Félix was a nightmare — he was always on her side, ready to argue any and all of them on anything, no matter what it was. Kagami was less of a nightmare as she stayed quiet more, but the icy demeanour she had made up for it. 

Marinette didn’t forgive him.

Once Alfred decided her life was no longer in immediate danger and that she was stable, she asked her friends to pack her things up and left. Away from Gotham. Away from the family. Away from Tim. They didn’t tell where they were going to go — Félix and Kagami had even insisted on paying for the flights themselves so Bruce wouldn’t find out as easily. 

That was the last time Tim had seen Marinette face to face.

Well, the last time before he saw her speak in a conference seven years later, a ring gracing her left ring finger. 

Tim did not stay. 

He didn’t have the right to. 

**Author's Note:**

> I?? Hope you enjoyed it??
> 
> You can also find me on my [tumblr](https://ethelphantom.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream at me about DC, Maribat or Code Geass! Screaming at me for hurting your feelings is also okay.


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